Monday, April 16, 2012

Quarters are cool, too

Quarter boxes.

Despite the title of this blog, I'm a huge fan of them. I've scored tons of great cards to my collection for just a few quarters. While they're not dime boxes, a quarter per card is still one heck of a deal.

Dime boxes are still easily my favorite, but I just love bargain hunting in general. Dimes and quarters are among the best things about this hobby. They can still net you some spectacular finds, something that can't be said about many other hobbies, if any.

On a slightly different topic, I had a lot of fun reading the comments to my recent "condition threshold" post. I'm glad people enjoyed it, as I always love reading comments from my fellow readers.

One interesting point that a couple people brought up is that there might not be much of a "story" behind a card that's beat to shreds. Perhaps a kid just didn't take good care of it.

I can see that point of view, although I tend to think that the kid not caring or not wanting to keep it in decent shape is in fact part of the "story". It goes back to a simpler time in the hobby.

But I definitely see the argument.

However, there's no denying that there's certainly a great story behind the cards I'll be featuring in this post.

Which brings us back to the quarter boxes.

I've mentioned the great quarter box I dug through at the local flea market in the past couple summers. There was a stack of '68 Topps inside one particular week. Of course, I found some great cards. (Has there ever been a bad vintage quarter box?)

Somehow, I missed an important piece of a couple of the cards I bought.

As soon as I saw the name "Luis Tiant", I put it in the stack.

As soon as I saw the name "Maury Wills", I put it in the stack.

Once I got home, I dumped out all my flea market "finds", as I always did. It was then I noticed something I had previously missed. Something that made me love and appreciate these cards a whole lot more.

You may have noticed that the Tiant and Wills have another image in the bottom-left corner of each card. At first, I had no clue what they were. I figured I might have some type of rare, short-printed versions of a few '68 Topps cards.

Upon further research, I discovered that those smaller images were actually stickers from the 1969 Topps Decals set. I'd never seen any of them in person before, and I'd never previously owned one.

I imagine that the '69 Topps Decals weren't that easy to obtain when they were initially released. The fact that a kid opened up enough packs to even pull a couple of the decals, then matched them up and stuck them onto their corresponding cards is purely awesome.

Card companies have tried to push the word "unique" into their set descriptions in recent years. While a card may say "1/1", they're really not all that special in a lot of cases.

These cards, however, are truly unique in their own ways. I doubt you'd be able to find anything like them anywhere else.

It's funny how a few rusty old quarters can make you further appreciate this great hobby.